Saturday, 10 October 2015

Our editor's pick of this week's 10 best psychology and neuroscience links:

Cracking the Skull Open
Most of our organs can be treated as repairable machines. Why can’t we treat mental illness by simply fixing the brain? asks Joe Herbert at Aeon magazine.

A New Take on Academic Readiness
Psychologists, medical educators and other behavioral scientists are helping to develop so-called noncognitive tests for college admissions and other educational purposes, writes Tori DeAngelis in the APA Monitor.

The Unbearable Loneliness of Creative Work
A new study described by Ruth Graham at the Boston Globe suggests that workers who spend the day doing things like generating new ideas spend less time at home, and have fewer cognitive resources left by the time they get home, which likely has implications for their relationships.

Why Public Beheadings Get Millions of Views (video)
In a disturbing — but fascinating — newly posted TED talk, anthropologist Frances Larson examines humanity's strange relationship with public executions … and specifically beheadings. As she shows us, they have always drawn a crowd, first in the public square and now on YouTube. What makes them horrific and compelling in equal measure?

The Science of Sounding Smart
At Harvard Business Review, Juliana Schroeder and Nicholas Epley described their experiments that suggest it is easier to convince people of your intellect by speaking to them, than by making your case in written form.